


And a Bored Lonely God in the Sea

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve Dishonored Christmas drabbles, ranging from the serious to the deeply silly, written in the twelve days leading up to Christmas 2012. Originally posted on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carols

She’s asking  _again_.

Corvo takes Emily aside and presses a cup of that expensive Pandyssian cocoa into her hands and explains, wearily, everything that the title of Empress means. And how it means that it’s not proper for her to go caroling in the Estate District. No matter how much she wants to.

“But I’m  _Empress_ ,” Emily retorts. “That  _means_  I get to do what I want.”

“Not if it’s not safe.”

“But –!”

_“No.”_

And that’s the end of that.

Two nights later, he’s woken by loud and off-key singing from the grand hall. Well.  _Singing_  is a generous word.  _Shouting_  is closer to the mark.

“DECK THE HALLS WITH BOUGHS OF HOLLY, FA-LA-LA-LA-LA –”

Corvo groans and trips his way out of bed. He can hear a guard yelling already. Maybe they’ll get her to stop and he won’t have to –

“Sorry!” Emily shouts, “I can do another song! I SAW THREE SHIPS COME SAILING IN –”

“Emily!”

“THE STREETS ARE VERY DIRTY, MY SHOES ARE VERY THIN, I HAVE A LITTLE POCKET TO PUT A PENNY IN –“

“Emily stop!”

“BRIGHTLY SHONE THE MOON THAT NIGHT, THOUGH THE FROST WAS CRUEL – ”

“Go back to bed!”

“AND TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY, COMFORT AND JOY –”

“Alright!” Corvo shouts, hands to his temples. Sweet Outsider, it’s  _hours_ before dawn. “Alright! I’ll take you caroling!”

“Thanks!”

“Now go to bed!”

*****

Piero is the only one who doesn’t appear at the appointed street corner at the appointed time; Corvo’s not sure if he’s sad or relieved that the man’s lost his nerve (Piero  _can’t sing_ ). Sokolov shows up wearing a ridiculous red hat, and Corvo argues with him and eventually persuades him to go home once he catches the whiff of alcohol on his breath (“but of course I’m drunk! We’ll  _all_ want to be drunk by the end of this!”).

Corvo has a decent voice but can’t carry a tune to save his life. Callista has more or less the opposite problem. Samuel, to no one’s surprise, is a wonderful singer; Cecelia surprises them all by proving that she has a low, rich voice that compliments his perfectly. Between the two of them, and Geoff Curnow, and Emily’s enthusiasm, they actually sound… well. They’re better than Corvo had expected.  _Decent_  is perhaps an overstatement.

They stomp through the snow of the Estate District until everyone’s cheeks are red from cold, and Corvo and Callista take the little Empress’s hands and swing her over the patches of ice, and they make up in volume what they lack in singing ability – and apart from Lydia Boyle leaning out an upstairs window to empty a bowl of punch on Corvo’s head, the night goes shockingly well.


	2. Parties

“The winter holidays,” says Waverly serenely, holding her hands behind her back, “are a time for attending parties and gathering gossip that’ll serve us throughout the year.”

Esma and Lydia just look at her, and the look on both their faces clearly says _I hate you_.

It is, after all, the holidays.

“I thought it was a time for family,” says Esma, dry. Waverly pretends not to notice the way her eyes flicker; pretends she doesn’t know she’s thinking of her daughter packed off to a boarding school in north Gristol.

“I thought it was a time for endlessly repetitive music,” drawls Lydia.

“And fruitcake.”

“Also repetitive.”

“That too,” Waverly agrees. She holds out her hands. “We’ll draw straws for who goes where.”

“But that’s not fair if  _you’re_  the one holding – you rigged this, didn’t you?”

_“Never.”_

She did, of course. Lydia’s nerves will never handle another year at Brisby’s annual party; the family’s reputation will never handle Esma’s attendance at the Brimbsley one. Esma, therefore, finds herself stuck with the short straw and an evening of Brisby staring at her breasts all night. Lydia pulls the long straw, and titters behind her hand. Waverly, for her part, stays in the shadow of both of them and takes the boring middle straw. The Pendletons. At least poor Treavor will be marginally happy, even if she won’t be.

The parties fall on the same night, and the three Boyle ladies dress themselves in matching starkly-cut suits of silver, the color of ice, little bronze sprigs of holly pinned to their lapels. It is Waverly’s idea; if they dress alike, no one will be able to remember which one had attended which party and then be able to rank them by age or sophistication and come up with some kind of social slight. They stand in the entryway as the sun goes down, the three of them, all in identical silver with identical hair of gold, smiling identical fixed smiles and wishing each other a good time.

It is such a perfectly rehearsed lie.

There’s a brittle silence, then, as they wait for the railcar to arrive, coughing and staring at each other awkwardly. (Lydia will have a night of uncomfortable heathen debauchery. Esma will have a night of uncomfortable improperness. Waverly will have a night of an uncomfortably depressed Treavor clinging to her like a leech).

The railcar screeches to a stop outside the gate, and all of them wince.

And none of them move.

“Fuck this,” says Lydia.

And that is how, while the entire Estate District is a riot of color and light and cheerful backstabbing, the three Ladies Boyle find themselves sitting on the floor of Esma’s room with a bottle of brandy between them, leaning on each other’s shoulders and proclaiming loudly how much they hate ( _no, really, hate, why doesn’t anyone believe me, I’m not drunk, shut up Esma, I’m not_ ), absolutely  _hate_  the holidays.


	3. Pudding

The night of the first snow, Emily tracks down every single important soul in the Tower and makes sure they all stir the winter pudding batter and make a wish. Because they’re going to need a  _lot_  of wishes if they want to get the plague fixed by spring like Piero promised.  She stands hawk-eyed over the giant copper kettle and sees that everyone gives a good stir. She doesn’t ask what they wish for – that would be  _rude_ , and with most people (Sokolov, Piero, Corvo) she can probably guess.

(For her part, Emily finds herself wishing she could talk to her mother; blinks, hugs herself, remembers she’s not a little girl anymore, and puts in a second just-in-case wish for the plague to be cured).

The Empress herself is the one to drop the three tokens in the pudding  before it’s put away to age. A silver coin, for wealth. A silver anchor, for safe harbor. A wishbone, made of real whalebone that’s been passed down for generations and is probably terrifyingly heretical, for luck. In they go, one after another. Another stir, another wish (for a new set of crayons), and then the whole mixture – fruit, brandy, suet, anchor and coin and bone – is all wrapped up and whisked away deeper into the kitchens.

The winter snows keep falling. They pile around Dunwall Tower, and the nights are very, very cold, and for those who don’t have safe harbor it must be very dark indeed.

The pudding flames very prettily when it’s finally brought out. And it’s _delicious_. Corvo finds the wishbone in his slice when he nearly cracks a tooth on it. Captain Curnow comes away with the silver coin. Emily finds the anchor in her slice. Her nose wrinkles. She’s been watching the servants and she has a funny feeling they made sure she got a token on  _purpose_ , and anyway –

She pushes the little plate away and demands a second slice, and eats that one now, and saves this one  _for later_.

 _Later,_  she ducks out of Corvo’s gaze for a moment and scurries downstairs, down where the stone of the tower gives way to rickety servants’ quarters and guard barracks. She draws odd looks; but she’s Empress. No one stops her. The silver anchor that’s half-embedded in the plum-black slice of pudding she holds glitters in the chilly gas-lamp light.  

Corvo said –

He’s said a  _lot_  of things. He’s said the old Lord Regent was the one who really killed her mother.

He’s also said how  _cold_  it was in prison.

Emily’s not really sure where the prison is, only that there’s a passage down here somewhere. She takes a lot of wrong turns. But, eventually, she finds a man in a gaoler’s uniform and stands on tiptoe and presses the plate with the pudding-slice and the safe-harbor anchor into his huge hands. “Make sure that Lord Burrows gets this,” she tells him seriously. “I think he needs it.”


	4. Lights

Cecelia stamps her feet in the snow. She’s bundled up in a heavy coat, hat pulled low and scarf pulled high so that only her eyes, nose, and a brilliant spattering of freckles are uncovered. It’s like body armor against the cold. Or against other things. If she’s thrown back by an explosion, at least she will be well-cushioned.

When Piero and Sokolov get together, it never hurts to be prepared.

“You know,” she calls up toward the roof, “when I asked you two to make the pub more festive, this was  _not_  what I had in mind.”

“Mmmf mm mmffmnth –“ Piero takes the nails out of his mouth. “For the hundredth time, it’s perfectly safe. We have minimized all possible risks.” He gestures expansively with the hammer, and immediately has to grab at the ladder for balance. It had taken two glasses of cordial and a long talking-to to get him up there, and Cecelia has a funny feeling that he’s like a  _cat_  and will need an even longer talking-to to venture back down. “We’ve run all sorts of tests –”

“Sokolov said it was untested.”

“You weren’t supposed to hear that,” Sokolov grouches. He’s sitting on the snow-covered ground, fiddling with the control panel of the power-source they’ve rigged up. Loops upon loops of light-studded wires hook up to it and run up the eaves of the pub. They’re looped around Sokolov’s arms and legs as well. Some of them are tangled in his beard.

Blue, Cecelia thinks. They’re supposed to burn blue.  _Whale-oil_  blue.  _Wall of Light_  blue.

“If you set my pub on fire – ”

“We will  _not_ set your pub on fire,” says Sokolov. “This time next year, every house in Dunwall will be decorated with these fairy-lights. The next year, every house in Gristol. You will see. Piero, are you done?”

“Almost.”

“Hurry up, please? It’s colder than Waverly Boyle’s –”

(Cecelia covers her ears to block out the rest)

It takes a predictably long time to talk Piero down from his precarious perch on the ladder, but Cecelia eventually manages it. The three of them stands shoulder-to-shoulder in the snow, and Piero hands the jump-cables to Cecelia with a mumbled “you should do the honors.” It would be sweet if she wasn’t worried that it’s to ensure  _she’s_  legally responsible in case things explode.

She braces herself and connects the cables.

(A week later, a whole strand will fizz out in a burst of white-blue sparks. Sokolov will light his beard on fire when he tries to repair it, and Cecelia will open a bottle of the man’s favorite wine to dull the shame and pain. “Maybe in _two_  years every house in Dunwall will have them,” he’ll mutter. Cecelia will just pour him another glass).

But for now, the three of them wrap their arms around each other and watch the roof and windows of the pub light up with strings of tiny blue lights like twinkling stars.

It’s  _beautiful_.


	5. Ugly sweaters

To be fair, Corvo puts up with a lot.

He’s dealt with a dress-uniform dinner where the Tyvian and Serkonin dignitaries got drunk and started firing shots across the table. He’s dealt with Jessamine getting out of her carriage to hold the hands of civilians. He’s dealt with one of those civilians pulling out a  _grenade_. He’s dealt with Jessamine insisting that she’s perfectly safe; Jessamine insisting that she  _didn’t_  need protecting for a trip down to the Abbey that ultimately saw five assassins springing from behind the curtains; Jessamine insisting that  _come on, I need to thank you for saving me, no one will notice if we vanish for five minutes –_

(To be perfectly fair, he hadn’t minded the last one).

The point is: he’s Royal Protector. She’s his charge. He’s used to her shenanigans by now.

This is  _not_  part of the job description.

“No,” he repeats.

 _“Corvo.”_  Jessamine flounces into an armchair. She’s grinning. Her sweater is making her look very soft and very, very huggable, if a bit lumpy – and  _yes_ , the green perfectly compliments her pale skin and dark eyes, but for goodness’ sakes  _there are trees on her sweater_. It’s not natural. “Why not?”

“It’s ugly.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

“But it  _jingles_.”

“Also the point!”

He holds up his own sweater. It’s in the familiar dark blue of his uniform with little gold ribbons and gold jingle bells sewn on in clusters, and it makes noise whenever it moves. Corvo makes a small miserable sound. “I can’t – I can’t shadow people when I’m covered in  _bells_ , Jessamine,” he points out, because it’s obvious, it should be  _obvious_. He shakes the sweater at her to emphasize the point with a cacophony of tinkling. “I can’t do my job like this!”

“I don’t need you to do your job,” she says serenely. “I need you put that on and march downstairs and attend the holiday dinner looking like a handsome idiot. Because your Empress needs to get her fun somehow. It’s the dress code this year. I gave them to  _everyone_. You should see Anton’s, it’s got glittery snowflakes.”

“But –”

“There’s not going to be assassins in the pudding, Corvo.”

“There  _could_  be.”

“Then you’ll jingle very merrily while you protect me from them.”

She looks so pleased with herself, lounging there in – in – in a ridiculous knit pile of  _cuddly evergreen trees_ , and Corvo wants to yank that stupid sweater off her (and he stops that train of thought  _very quickly_  before it derails off a cliff and they’re late for dinner), and he wants to laugh, and he possibly wants to cry laughing; and all he can muster is a weak tinkling of bells as he shakes the sweater at her in despair.

She ends up pulling it over his head for him so that his arms are pinned by his sides. She marches him downstairs by force (to be fair, he doesn’t fight very hard).

He jingles all the way.


	6. Gingerbread

Samuel puzzles out Emily’s handwriting as she explains the list to him. “I asked Lydia,” she begins, bouncing on her toes, “and she says she can get the flour and molasses and stuff but some of it’s things only nobles eat, and so I asked Wallace, and Wallace said he only cooks for Treavor, and then Callista yelled at him and Wallace called her a –”

“A name you heard at the Golden Cat?” Samuel supplies quickly

“-  _right_. And then I remembered Corvo saying you knew everyone.” Bounce, bounce. “So can you get it all?”

“…Of course. Go back inside before you freeze.”

There’s  a plague going on. He’s got his work cut out for him.

(He could say no. Of course he doesn’t).

_Refined sugar_

Finding this one isn’t a problem. Affording it is. He heads back to Emily and makes her promise two weeks’ worth of we’ll-give-you-an-allowance-when-we-actually-have-money credit. He won’t accept the money when it’s time, but the lesson can’t hurt.

_Candies_

Prunes and candied orange peel will have to do.

_Black pepper_

He finds it cheap off a ship captain who hasn’t yet learned that you spice bad food to mask the smell.

_Ginger, clove, cinnamon_

Spices like this come from Serkonos. No ships are coming in from Serkonos, not with the blockade; at least, not  _legal_  ones.. Samuel putters his way out to a ship with doused lights late one night. The captain isn’t happy about the price and takes a pot-shot at him on his way back to shore, and when Samuel tells the story later he’ll give the man an eyepatch and maybe a peg-leg to match.

_Cocoa_

Cocoa comes from  _Pandyssia_. Samuel goes to Corvo for this one. The man sighs, leaves for the Estate District that night, and comes back with a single battered tin. Samuel wipes the blood off it and doesn’t ask.

_Cream_

They have the days-old cheap stuff for their tea, but Samuel calls in a favor and gets a small jug of fresh cream once he has everything else. She is, after all, the soon-to-be Empress.

After it’s all gathered and Samuel’s quietly given Wallace a piece of his mind and reminded him that he’s the best baker of their little group and this is his chance to  _show off_ , Samuel pulls into the harbor to find the scent of gingerbread wafting through the air.  Emily meets him at the dock. She’s got the tiny cup of drinking cocoa in her hand, and a resultant tiny cocoa mustache on her upper lip. “Treavor’s burned,” she announces, “and three of them stuck together so I decorated them like me and Mother and Corvo, and –” she holds out a plate to Samuel. “Here’s you!”

It actually does look a bit like him. She’s done his scarf in orange peel, and Samuel blinks at all of the frosting on the cookie’s head. “Is that -?”

“Muttonchops,” says Emily brightly.

Samuel snickers and bites off the head first.


	7. White elephant party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was written for the Dishonored fandom on Tumblr and their delightful headcanons about the cuddly silliness of the Whalers. I'm sorry.

Daud regrets many, many things in his life. This one isn’t even near the top of the list. But it’s _close._

He makes Jenkins repeat himself twice. The first time it’s because the man’s mask turns his voice all muffled and buzzy, and it’s hard to understand what he’s saying  over the hiss of a winter storm through the windowpanes. The second time, it’s because Daud can’t believe what he’s _hearing_.

“But what _is_ an elephant?” he eventually asks. He hates the way it comes out more _bewildered_ than _indignant._

“Some kind of animal from Pandyssia?”

“But why is it _white?”_

(This is not the question Daud should be asking. The question he should be asking runs more along the lines of “why is your head still attached to your body?”)

Jenkins shrugs. “So can we have one?”

“Get back to work!”

Daud regrets many, many, _many_ things in his life. The list goes something like this: taking a ship to Gristol. Shaking Hiram Burrows’s hand. Recruiting Jenkins. Murdering the Empress. Not sending Jenkins on the Abbey job. Not refusing Jenkins’s request outright (not that it would have done anything). Conversely, not taking charge of the party himself. Not searching everyone’s footlockers for contraband the night before.

He forgets about the party _entirely_ until it’s late at night and he hears unholy gales of laughter coming from the bunkhouse. He frowns at his desk. Gets up with a scrape of chair legs on floor. Shivers away and reappears in the shadow of the doorway to find that his men have pushed all the beds aside and they’re sitting in a circle on the floor, next to a pile of… _things_. Daud squints.

A loop of piano wire.

An Overseer mask.

A scrapbook, that he will later discover is full of lovingly pasted-in and preserved wanted posters that show Daud’s own scowling face. There are mustache doodles on only a few of them.

A squeaky dog toy.

A waterlogged case of Serkonin cigars.

A pair of hand-knitted mittens (red).

A flipbook.

His men are a gang of supernatural assassins, hand-chosen, deadly. They’re covered in tattoos that echo the Outsider’s mark and they’ve each killed men without flinching, and the Abbey would like nothing more than to burn every single one alive. And now, as the snow falls _inside_ through the gaps in the building’s roof, they sit in a circle and pass junk around and laugh like _schoolchildren_ , and as far as Daud can tell they aren’t even _drunk_.

They go quiet when one sees him in the doorway – and then Jenkins perks up. “Come on, boss. We didn’t invite you in case you said no, but –”

Daud regrets many things. Sitting down on the floor with the junior Whalers is not one of them. Laughing with them is not one of them. Throwing a bone charm into the junk-I-do-not-want pile is not one of them. Coming away with Jenkins’s flipbook?

Looking inside?

Seeing the drawings of himself?

_Is._


	8. Tree

There are always two trees in Dunwall Tower. There’s the tree for the Empire, of course, towering in the center of the grand hall – and then there’s the smaller tree, the family tree, up in the ruler’s chambers where guests and officials will not see.

Symbols are important. Stability is important. Set a good example of order, and everyone else must fall in line. Hiram Burrows understands this, now more than ever. He takes a moment, amidst the plague and blockade and rioting and Parliamentary chaos, to make sure the great tree goes up. It’s decorated impeccably. It takes him at least a week to realize what is _missing._

This is the problem: the small tree is decorated by the ruler’s family, and there _is_ no family in Dunwall Tower. Not anymore. It’s just him.

Burrows has a tree chosen and cut and brought up just the same. It’s placed where it’s always placed, in the window of the ruler’s chambers, across from the crackling fire. The servants trim the branches and place the tiny tea-light candles upon them in precise rows, and they bring up the boxes of ornaments from storage, and then they leave him to it.

It takes him an hour to unwrap the ornaments. He does it very carefully. He lays them on the table and looks at each one.

There are ornaments of lacquered wood, tin, painted bone, delicate blown glass. Strings of tinsel and little colored beads. There are precious little snowflakes, trumpets, soldiers, ships, carved little mittens and whales and smiling faces. Some of them are very expensive. Some of them are handmade – he recognizes Emily’s shaky hand on a blue little bauble that just reads “to mother,” recognizes what must be _Jessamine’s_ shaky childhood hand on a different one. He picks it up, turns it over. It’s nothing but a silver bell of cheap metal, no different from what anyone can buy in the store. Utterly common. It’s very breakable in his hand.

He puts it down.

There are memories and family keepsakes here that are older than him, that are many times older than Jessamine herself –

Burrows corrects himself. Than _the Empress_ was. Than the Empress was _when she died_.

He finds the star for the top. He doesn’t know the histories of these ornaments, their stories, but at least he knows that the star goes on last. Emily’s done it the past few years. She sits on Corvo’s shoulders. He’s seen it.

Quietly, meticulously, alone, Burrows decorates the tree. He gives each ornament its proper place, according to what  is pleasing. Everything is ordered and evenly spaced. The tree glitters in the firelight.

It is utterly perfect.

In the morning, he tears it down. Throws all the ornaments back in their boxes and writes a single, short, and very confused letter. Esma Boyle arrives at the Tower the following night. They shut the door, and take their time, and this time they do it _right._


	9. Yule log

They could have at least given him a retiree’s apartment where he could _smell_ the sea. Havelock likes to think that he’s doesn’t hold grudges, but he does.

He slams the window closed. The air smells of snow and woodsmoke and nothing else. He’s too far inland for even a whiff of brine – and in Dunwall, this is no small feat. The warped glass of the window blocks out all that. It _doesn’t_ block out the sound of carolers on the street outside, but he can live with this.

(A single sprig of holly above the door is his only concession to the season. Havelock doesn’t feel very festive. No one in the city _should_ feel very festive).

 _Ye who now shall bless the poor,_ sing the people outside, _shall yourselves find blessing –_

Havelock snorts.

If he were Burrows, he’d tell them to shut up. He’s not Burrows. He is a _very different_ sort of man; it’s important to remember this. Burrows took the throne by lying and holds it because he wants power. Havelock will take it because it’s _right_ , and hold it because –

Because he can order the Empire the way he orders ( _ordered_ ) men on the deck of a ship.

Because he can clear his record and put himself _back_ on the deck of a ship.

Havelock turns from the window. He should be warm from the mulled wine he and Teague and Treavor had shared, toasting the season and their new allegiance. He’s not. He’s cold (he’s _always_ cold) and the little apartment is cold despite the fire that burns in the tiny hearth – and there’s a chill tightness in his chest when he looks at the ship’s wheel leaning against the fireplace.

Ships are made of metal but their hearts are still wood, and this is the heart of a ship indeed. It’s not _his_ ship (that’s sailing under another man). He got it off an old schooner that was being broken apart for scrap – a good model, a _good_ ship, the kind of ship that sailed in the Morley Insurrection, the kind he’d grown up on. The wheel is black and polished with the sweat of many hands.

It smells of brine. It smells of the sea.

It’s hard work, breaking it apart, and it feels a bit like sacrilege.

It’s supposed to be a mere _log_ that’s fed to the fireplace, to burn with the premonition of a new summer and burn all past sins away. This is more fitting. He _was_ an Admiral; he _will be_ Regent and Admiral again. The broken pieces of wheel _pop_ when the fire hits them. The wood is oiled and brittle and goes up in a rush and a great gout of bitter smoke. The flames are brilliant yellow. Havelock watches them, and thinks of burning the old away and lighting the way for the new, and revolution, and the deck of a ship solid underneath him, long after the wheel all crumbles into ash.


	10. Presents

Treavor wakes up before his brothers and before dawn. It’s by design. He pads down the grand staircase (the servants’ one creaks). The marble is cold even through his slippers. The manor is resplendent:  garlands twining up the bannisters, candles in the windows, bunches of those strange red Pandyissian flowers on the lintel of each door.

He feels very, very small.

There’s a fire blazing already, and stockings hung above. Three. They’re identical – Treavor has a vague feeling that his parents made sure of this, just like they made sure that all three of them were perfectly centered on the mantelpiece. If things were accurate, he thinks, Morgan’s and Custis’s would be dead center and his own stocking would be shoved to the side. It’d probably be small and lumpy. Maybe a bit frayed.

He takes them down and counts.

Each of the three stockings has exactly one apple, two oranges, twelve walnuts, six little peppermints, and one wooden toy. It’s all perfectly fair. His parents would make sure it’s fair.

(Until last year, Treavor didn’t know his parents filled the stockings. Then Morgan had yanked him aside and told him that the story of a frost-rimmed ghost who slipped down chimneys and left frozen footprints on the hearth was just a _story_ , stop being a _child_. Treavor was five).

Treavor puts all the fruits and candies and toys back where he found them – all except a few of his own. Two peppermints and an orange. He slips them in his pocket, and hangs the stockings _very carefully_ , and sneaks upstairs and hides his goodies and pretends to sleep.

Everyone wakes up an hour later. The twins are clever enough to not _look_ pleased that they got more things than Treavor, not with their parents watching. But he can read it in their smiles. He isn’t surprised when things get scattered and mixed up and all of the mints and most of the nuts _somehow_ wind up in their own stockings instead of his. He isn’t surprised, either, when the twins’ present turns out to be a pair of toy pistols – and an hour later Treavor winds up in the kitchen, being given brandy to quiet his sniffling, sporting a nice cluster of bruises that _just happen_ to be the size of snapped rubber bands.

Treavor’s father walks into the kitchen, stares at the bruises a bit, sighs, ruffles Treavor’s hair, mutters “they don’t mean it,” and walks back out.

The servant who’d given him the brandy shakes his head. Trevor’s pretty sure his name is Wallace. He’s one of the nice ones. “Of _course_ they mean it,” Wallace says offhandedly. He catches Treavor’s eye. “How about you show me what you got?”

And Treavor hops down from his stool and runs to fetch his little box of tin soldiers, and he and his new conspirator end up staging epic wars on the kitchen floor. And he forgets about his brothers for a little while.


	11. Snowball fight

The first snowball takes him in the back of the head.

Corvo whips around, because being _hit by an incoming projectile_ is usually a sign of very bad things. Jessamine ducks behind a pillar. She’s giggling. It takes him a split second to determine if she’s getting out of range of his _crossbow_ – stuff like that’s happened before, it’s not _his fault_ if he’s jumpy – or out of range of a retaliatory strike –

Her second snowball goes wide and lands to his right with a soft _piff_ sound.

Definitely a retaliatory strike, then. Corvo grins.

 “This isn’t very fair,” he calls. “You can’t aim to save your life.”

“Don’t need to if  you’re standing still,” she says primly. She peeks out behind the pillar. Her cheeks are red from the cold and she’s bouncing another snowball in her hand and she looks undignified and not a little lovely, this is _utterly_ undignified, there’s freezing slush dribbling down under his collar –

_Piff._

There’s a sudden patch of snow in the dead center of his chest. Corvo is dimly aware that he must look very comical indeed as he blinks down at it.

It is _on_.

Jessamine gives a _shriek_ and darts behind the pillar so that his snowball bursts upon the stone behind her – and then she’s off and running, leaving a trail of footprints in the thick snow for him to follow. Corvo tries to chase. He ends up getting bogged down and faceplanting with a soft _paff_ sound.

(It’s not _his fault_. He’s got no idea how to run in this. He never saw snow when he was a kid).

He can hear Jessamine all but cackling as he gets up and brushes himself off. She’s sprinting toward the guard barracks. His eyes widen. “Come on!” he shouts. “That’s _not fair_!”

The snow muffles most sound in the courtyard – so it’s very _easy_ to hear the Empress announce to every man on duty that the one who hits the Lord Protector with the most snowballs gets short hours for the rest of the week.

And that is how Corvo Attano ends up bolting across the grounds of Dunwall Tower, twenty guardsmen and a very giggly Empress hot on his heels and snowballs raining all around him.

By evening, they’ve built two snowbank-forts on opposite ends of the inner yard, and the two teams of guards have flipped a coin to see who gets Corvo on their side (loser gets the Empress), and the ground is littered with craters, and they’re breathless and smiling and Corvo’s got snow in his hair and down his coat and inside his boots, and Hiram Burrows is standing in the window shaking his head. Corvo’s not entirely sure if it’s his snowball or Jessamine’s that hits the Spymaster in the face. It’s a _very good_ throw. The guards cheer.

Jessamine falls against him, helplessly laughing, and Corvo picks clumps of snow out of her hair and doesn’t care how it looks to those watching.


	12. First snow

The Abbey teaches that he is a creature who only takes. They are wrong.

He takes what he needs, first. Water from the depths of the sea. Air from the breath of a man reciting the Seven Strictures. Cold from the blue-tinted cheek of that man’s child who lies shivering and sick and red-weeping in a gutter. (He is not cruel, so he gives the child peace)

He takes the water and the air and the cold, and he gives them back as soft white snow. Snow, after all, is only water that has kissed the Void where he dwells and been frozen and set apart from time.

The Abbey teaches that he lives in the cold dark shadows of the world. The first snow of winter is certainly one of these. As it falls and dusts the roofs of the city, they gather and sing songs to ward him off and brace against the winter’s chill.

They teach that he has seventy different forms. They are in denial about this one.

He lives in the snow, and he also lives in their _music_ that rises up as the snow drifts down. All the Overseers sing as one, lips moving behind their golden masks. Campbell sings. Teague sings. Edmund and Windham and Franklin, they all sing, and he lives in the lungs and the mouth and the song of each man. Their voices twine around the falling snow, and he dances upon and within them both, and they exult, and so does he.

The snow blankets every corner of the city. It turns the buildings white and the streets slick and silver. It makes things look pure. And wherever it touches, he is there.

He is in the ice upon the Wrenhaven that drives Samuel Beechworth indoors to the light and life and company of friends. He is in the snow that sends Esma Boyle’s daughter running into the garden to play. When frost coats the walls of Coldridge Prison and soothes the pain of Corvo Attano’s burns and makes him think of happier winters, he is there; when a Whaler removes his mask to catch a snowflake on his tongue, he is there; when Emily Kaldwin breathes against the glass of her narrow window to watch the patterns that form, he is there. He is _always_ there.

The Abbey teaches this, but they do not have the slightest idea of how true it really is.

They teach that he is a thing that is strange. Jealous and curious and dreadfully _lonely_. Set apart. _Outside_. They are right. But on this night of nights, he shapes each snowflake and sends it tumbling down to gild the city and make it beautiful. He brings a hint of the frozen perfection of the Void into being, and makes men love it. He melts into every corner. Every heart. He turns every man’s face up to the sky and fills every eye with wonder. And he is not alone at _all._


End file.
